39.1. Short description In the summer of 2011, several so-called “work corporations” (werkcorporaties) started operating in the municipality of Nijmegen. These work corporations aim at re-employing social assistance (Wet Werk en Bijstand, or WWB) receivers with a considerable distance from the labour market by offering them a place where they can combine work and education.…
40.1. Short description Housing corporation Portaal, together with the municipality of Nijmegen, started the project “A Future for Everybody” in 2009 because the province (Gelderland) reserved money for the development of “innovative living arrangements” within a larger programme. It was not stated clearly what was meant by “innovative living arrangements”, but the focus had to…
41.1. Short description In 2009, three Moroccan fathers in Nijmegen saw that successful “neighbourhood father” projects were running in other cities in the Netherlands. Together with a local welfare worker from Tandem Welfare they visited such a project in The Hague to see how it was organised. The fathers thought that such an initiative could…
Sustainability Although all innovations were, at least at the start, dependent on public funding, an explicit wish exists among members of all three projects to continue even if financial resources dry up. However, this urge to be self-sufficient was driven by different logic. Work corporations would prefer to earn revenues of their own because the…
Selected examples of social innovation and insights discovered via the research, show that in the city of Varaždin the area of social policy public administration has developed the capacity to understand the relevant issues. Their active work provides a framework for cooperation and encourages development of new programmes. In our case, it turned out that…
7.1. Short description: context Institutional arrangement for housing policy at the local level, after the political turmoil in 1990, has been changed profoundly. Housing policy as a clear responsibility of different levels of state administration helping people to meet housing needs has disappeared. In that time, they were responsibility of local administration to sell public…
6.1 Short description “Gardens of life” is a project that started in 2011, and which was initiated by the CSO network “Green network,” and delivered in cooperation with Development agency “North”, City of Varaždin and the City Market Varaždin. The project was targeted at the socially vulnerable population in Varaždin, users of social assistance of…
5.1 Short description The Croatian Employment Office has developed a grant scheme “Women in the Labour Market” within the Operational Programme “Human Resources Development”, financed by IV. Component of Accession Assistance (IPA). Projects funded through this grant scheme are designed to include in the labour market those women who are faced with special difficulties in…
4.1 Short description In the frame of “National Plan for Employment for 2009 and 2010”, Regional Office Varaždin in cooperation with units of local government and NGOs started a public works programme. The scheme continued to operate in 2011-2013. District Employment Office Varaždin in 2009 planned to include 41 people in the public works program,…
Local background of the social innovations Over time, a strongly left-wing political culture emerged in Nijmegen. Its key values related to the protection of the less well off: solidarity, equal opportunities to participate in society and the urge for an “undivided” city. Over the past few years, a fear of increasing divisions between residents in…